Throughout the world markets, approximately 73 million tons of poultry are raised, processed, and brought to market each year. In the United States alone, more than 17 million tons of poultry are raised and slaughtered for commercial sale annually.
For the vast majority of commercially raised poultry, the animals (e.g. chickens, turkeys, specialty hens, etc.) are raised by contract growers and then transported to processing facilities where the poultry is slaughtered and then processed for sale (e.g. de-feathered, eviscerated, and butchered). In typical, prior art de-feathering operations, the bird carcasses are first scalded with high temperature water (to aid in the removal of feathers) and then transported through a “picking” line. A conventional picking line, as is employed prolifically throughout the United States and the world, utilizes a conveying system by which poultry carcasses are carried between batteries of rotating disks or drums having rubber picking fingers extending therefrom. As the carcasses traverse the picking line, the rubber fingers strike the bird carcasses (as they rotate mounted on the rotating disks or drums) and bind the feathers, thereby removing them as the carcass continues its passage.
Although the prior art apparatus and process have been employed throughout the industry for many years, various drawbacks of the prior art have been discovered to exist. In this regard, the rubber picking fingers used for binding the feathers of the poultry during de-feathering operations (employed on the rotating disks and/or drums) are prone to cracking and/or forming microscopic holes (i.e. micro-poring) which can harbor bacteria. Because poultry carcasses passes through a picking line sequentially, if a given “finger” or set of “fingers” is contaminated, then it is possible that bacteria will be passed to each carcass which contacts that finger or set of fingers thereafter. For these reasons, strict operation guidelines have been established, in accordance with United States Department of Agriculture laws and regulations, to ensure that contamination of picking lines is minimized (so that contaminated meat is not sold to consumers). For example, in order to prevent and/or decrease contamination risk, typical industry guidelines mandate that the picking line be shut down periodically for cleaning (e.g. twice a day). During these cleanings, there is significant downtime in which poultry carcasses cannot be processed thus reducing plant efficiency. Furthermore, when bacteria penetrates cracks or pores in the rubber fingers, it is difficult and time consuming to complete adequate decontamination/sterilization using conventional methods.
As a further drawback, conventional rubber picking fingers are relatively large in diameter and thus have substantial mass per unit of length. For this reason, in a conventional picking line, prior art fingers strike poultry carcasses with considerable force and are prone to damaging the carcasses and/or reducing yield e.g. breaking the commercially valuable wings and/or causing the fat of the carcass to be expelled from beneath the skin of the bird. When fat is removed from the carcass, the effective yield of the carcass is decreased (i.e. because poultry is sold by weight). In fact, as much as ½ to 2 percent yield is lost due to picker finger design alone. In this regard, due to the shear volume of poultry processed, losses amounting to as little as ¼ percent yield have an economic impact to a processing plant which approaches millions of dollars per year.
In view of the above-enumerated drawbacks, it is apparent that there exists a need in the art for apparatus which overcomes the above drawbacks. It is a purpose of this invention to fulfill these needs in the art, as well as other needs which will become apparent to the skilled artisan once given the above disclosure.